Australian students make $2 version of malaria drug price-hiked by Martin Shkreli

In September 2015 biotech executive Martin Shkreli became one of the most reviled men on the internet after purchasing the rights to an anti-malaria drug that treats malaria and hiking the price of the drug from US $13.50 to $750 a dose. Now a group of teenagers from Sydney, Australia have added on to the outrage by recreating the life-saving drug in their school lab for about US $2 per pill. Daraprim, a drug used to treat infections caused by parasites, saves millions of lives a year and is on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medicines. The grade 11 chemistry students at Sydney Grammar school worked on the project with the Open Source Malaria consortium, an organization with the goal of using publicaly available drugs and other medical approaches to cure the disease. The student involved in the project, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the controversy surrounding medication was an initiative to make the experiment a successful one.

Global Village Space is a news web portal that aims to provide a platform to all to promote dialogue and understanding. The portal will present all shades of opinion to enhance understanding. We encourage our writers to be respectfully irreverent and our readers to be tolerant.